“She was a caged bird”

DECADES LATER MADHUBALA’S SURREAL CHARM AND TRAGIC LIFE CONTINUE TO INTRIGUE FANS. SISTER MADHUR BHUSHAN HOPES TO SEE A BIOPIC MADE ON THE LEGENDARY ACTOR SOMEDAY

- MADHUR BHUSHAN

“Darkness is the beauty I am made of…” --Kelli Russell Agodon, Hourglass Museum

Too much in too little time. Beauty, fame, love and heartbreak… Madhubala had lavish doses of this in her ephemeral life. She seemed to be in a great hurry to play out her karmic trysts. Bestseller at the age of 16. Beloved at 18. Broken at 23. Bedridden at 27. Buried at 36. Yet five decades later, her photographs and memories ignite social media. Her beatific face continues to mesmerise generations. In a career span of two decades, she did around 75 films, most of them hits. But what continues to consume fans, biographers and cineastes is her life off the camera. Her doomed affair with superstar Dilip Kumar. The chimera of a marriage with Kishore Kumar. The excruciating illness. The desertion of her celestial looks and dreams… Her extreme rise and fall are compared to that of her Hollywood counterpart – Marilyn Monroe. Their heads thrown back in similar abandon, their full smiles concealing their hollow hearts. Once featured in the Life Magazine, as ‘the biggest star’ in the world… an ailing and anguished Madhubala had died in spirit years before she was buried. Such a story as hers deserves to be told believes sister Madhur Bhushan. Disappointed that the biopic on Madhubala by Imtiaz Ali was stalled due to familial opposition, Madhur isn’t yet willing to give up on the celluloid dream… In her words...

THE STAR SISTER